WASHINGTON (AP) — Deporting migrants to Libya without a chance to challenge the removals would violate a court order, a federal judge said Wednesday, after immigration attorneys reported that authorities told people they would be sent to the country with a history of human rights violations.
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts has previously found that any migrants deported to countries other than their homelands must first be allowed to argue that removal would jeopardize their safety.
He said that any “allegedly imminent” removals to Libya would “clearly violate this Court’s Order.” He also ordered the government to hand over details about the claims.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said during a news conference in Illinois that she “can’t confirm” media reports of plans to remove people to Libya. President Donald Trump directed questions to DHS.
Several migrants being held in South Texas were informed early Tuesday of plans to send them to Libya, attorneys said, citing reports from relatives of those in detention.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers gathered six people in a room and told them that they needed to sign a document agreeing that they would be removed to Libya, immigration attorneys representing people from Vietnam said in a court filing.
“When they all refused, they were each put in a separate room and cuffed in (basically, solitary) in order to get them to sign it,” lawyers wrote.
Immigration attorneys say that some of their clients were told by immigration enforcement agents that they were going to be deported to Libya. Some were also told they were going to Saudi Arabia.
Murphy has been overseeing a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its practice of deporting people to countries where they are not citizens.
He ruled in March that even if people have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals, they can’t be deported away from their homeland before getting a “meaningful opportunity” to argue that it would jeopardize their safety.
If it were confirmed that the administration is removing migrants to Libya, a country with a documented history of abusing migrants, or to Saudi Arabia, which has its own history of human rights abuses, that would mark a major escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrants from the U.S. to third countries.
The administration has deported people to Panama and Costa Rica who were not citizens of those countries and in the most controversial example, sent Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.
The numbers involved in these removals are relatively small — in the hundreds — compared with the total number of people the Trump administration has removed from the country since taking office.
But sending someone to a country that is not their own has raised a host of questions about due process and, particularly in the case of El Salvador, whether they are going to be subject to further abuse there.
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AP writers John O’Connor in Springfield, Illinois, and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.
